English 242

1 March 2015
Victorian BLiP, #2
Porphyrias Lover by Robert Browning is a dramatic poem that shocks many people after
reading it. But how else are you supposed to feel after reading about a woman who has been
strangled by her own hair? After rereading this poem I dont feel that we should be too shocked
by the outcome. There are a lot of signs that lead to the way this poem is going to end. The
beginning of the poem sets the mood by describing the stormy weather (the way all thrillers
start). The line, The rain set early in tonight, lets you know right from the beginning that
something wasnt right (1). The weather seems to be a big symbol through this poem because
Browning personifies it a lot and the first four lines describes it instead of the speaker. In line
two he says that it is sullen and awake. You get a sense that Porphyria and her lover have been in
a relationship long enough that she feels comfortable to start a fire in his house. In lines fourteen
through seventeen you get a cold feeling from the speaker/man, And, last, she sat down by my
side/And called me. When no voice replied, /She put my arm about her waist. He is obviously
in deep thought because he does not reply back to her and she puts his arm around her instead of
him. The fact that she put his arm around her shows how much she trusted him. The speaker
remains passive until line thirty one when he finally looked up at her eyes. It is at this time that
he realizes that Porphyria worships him. It is also in this moment when he decides what to
do, wraps her hair around her neck, and strangles her. This scene seems so spontaneous because
he just [finds] a thing to do and then does it without a second thought (38). But it doesnt seem
as if the speaker has killed her out of hate or anger because he tries to convince himself that she
felt no pain (42). The speaker could be compared to Raskolnikov from Fyodor Dostoyevskys
Crime and Punishment in the way that he justifies his killing as an act of love and Raskolnikov
justifies his double homicide as an act to better the world based on his extraordinary man

theory. The speaker kills Porphyria so that she can be his forever; its kind of romantic, in a
psychotic creepy way.

Works Cited
Browning, Robert. Damrosch, David, Kevin J. H. Dettmar, Susan J. Wolfson, and Peter J.
Manning. "Porphyrias Lover" The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Vol. 2B. Boston:
Longman, 2010. Print.